Toluu

Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

Advice at the intersection of work and life

Feeling special is just as important as fitting inOctober 8

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur, and you can bet that there will be no big financial announcements. This is because Jews make up a disproportionately huge number of people in finance. So when the Jews take off work for Yom Kippur, there is not enough liquidity in the financial markets for anything really big to happen. As my hedge-fund brother says, "You don't want to have to get anything big done in finance on Yom Kippur."

I like learning this because I like being part of community. In general, it is lonely being Jewish. Not in New York City, where there are, really, more Jews than in Israel. But definitely in Wisconsin, where my son had to explain to a school administrator that Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish holiday.

There is part of me that likes being part of the community of Jews who almost all observe the High Holidays. But there is also part of me that appreciates being a minority, because you’re different, and different often means special. And we all want to be special in some way, even at the cost of being a minority.

I am fascinated with racial discrimination at work. I have felt nervous and out of place at times, like when my former bosses told offensive Jewish jokes in front of me. And when I’d tell them I am Jewish, they’d say, "Oh. Sorry. I didn't know you were Jewish." Like, “Oh,

You should make Sarah Palin your mentorOctober 6

Is no one going to say that Sarah Palin rocked the vice presidential debate? Who is so arrogant to think that they could do better with just five weeks' preparation?

She did a great job. She memorized speeches that she trotted out in good moments. And she had such nerve! Most of us would be too shy to flagrantly disregard the question, but she knew that was her job. She knew her job was to give set up answers and fit them in the best she could, and she did that. She delivered her lines very well. She played to the camera. She was friendly, and charming, and eloquent as long as you didn't mind that she talked about whatever she wanted.

The thing is that most of politics is not about giving the right answer. It's about giving any answer the right way. The world is not bashing Kennedy for beating Nixon in the classic debate where Nixon wore all the wrong stuff and the wrong makeup and could have said anything and he still would have lost. No. No one is complaining about Kennedy's dependence on style in that debate. And we didn't generally bash Reagan for being a great orator even though we thought he was probably losing his mind even before he got to office. He was still a great orator and could deliver his messages in a mesmerizing way.

So

Guest post: 5 new rules for dealing with race at workOctober 3

Here’s a guest post from Carmen Van Kerckhove. I have learned so much about race from her blog, Racialicious, that I asked her to write five tips for dealing with race at work. She always surprises me and this is no exception.

Rule 1:  Don't be colorblind.
People say this all the time: "I don’t care if people are black, brown, purple, or polka-dotted. I don’t notice color!”

But that’s a lie. All of us notice variations in physical appearance that cause us to draw conclusions as to what race a person is.

Then why do people insist on claiming that they don't notice color? Often, it's because they are scared to death of being labeled a racist.

But here's the thing. Noticing a person's race doesn't make you racist. What does make you racist is if you make assumptions about that person's intellectual, physical, or emotional characteristics based on the race you think the person is.

More importantly, when you proclaim that you're colorblind, what you're really implying is that race doesn't matter in America. Race still matters because racism is alive and well. Pretending otherwise negates the everyday experiences of millions of people of color in t

Intentional non-productivity is a productivity toolOctober 1

Almost 95% of Jews do something to observe Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I want my kids to be part of this when they grow up, so the only way to do that is to model it for them now. Because it's completely clear to me that people who believe in God are fundamentally more optimistic and more connected to community, and I want my kids to have that.

Also, I try not to work on the holidays because I want to be known, somehow, as a Jew who blogs about being Jewish. And if I'm going to do that, then I want to be known as someone who does not work on the holidays. It's part of being Jewish, I think, to struggle with what to do on these days. So I want to struggle, too.

Every year it is hard for me to stay away from work, even when every year that I have worked has felt terrible. But even if I could feel okay working on these days, it's not the person I want to be. Here’s who I am right now: the person who just two years ago moved to a state I knew no one in, and then

How to find meaningful workSeptember 29

At its core, meaningful work is helping people. But that makes you think you need to save children dying in Africa. But, really, you can push papers for multinational conglomerates and feel like you're doing good for the world. Here's how:

1. Take care of yourself—have the basics covered.
The most important thing about making meaningful work is that if you are always worried about paying rent, it's very hard to add goodness back to the rest of the world. Giving back to the world requires a sense of personal well-being and stability that only people who have a roof over their head can manage.

Back when I was doing what most of you would call meaningful work, I was totally preoccupied with budgeting my meager salary to make sure I didn't run out of money at the end of the month. At the end of that stint, when I landed in the hospital for a kidney infection, it turned out I was severely anemic, and I'm sure it was because I had such a poor diet from making so little money.

So before you worry about meaningful work, you need to be able to support yourself. Your first job in life is to figure out how to do that. It takes a while. You actually have to figure out what you are good at and what you like doing. This doesn't mean you have to dedicate your life to that work. But it means that you are learning and growing, and someone values the level of skill you have to pay you a wage with which you can support yourself, and others you might need to suppo